St. Anger

Watch the documentary. If you know what they were going through during the making of this album you can understand. Now it led to one of the most underrated albums they made. Death magnetic.

Do I even need to explain why this album is so bad?

I bought this when it first came out. Listened to the whole thing in my drive to work and threw it in the trash when I go there.

SOME KIND OF MONSTEEEER!!

I still don’t get why anyone thought this was a good idea?! These sound like unfinished demos that never added the guitar riffs! Not a single guitar solo here!

The fact that kirk made a review is crazier than my cousin

Awesome feel like the drums could be different but the lyrics and riffs are awesome love it

The song frantic is perfect for workouts

Fix the drums and it's not half bad

It’s that bad if you prefer your metal with good production and are generally appalled by the production values of death metal and grindcore. Even so, St Anger outdoes …And Justice For All in the bizarre production field by a long shot. The guitars sound nice and gnarled, but the drums sound like someone created a drum kit with thrash cans and buckets with orchestral cymbals to boot. The resulting sound is that of Metallica basically sounding like they’re truly playing in a garage and not a studio, which can be bad for some people but for me its fittingly raw considering the turmoil the band was in at the time. It’s a shame that the sonic details muddle so much of the music though, because I feel that much of the compositions are criminally underrated (save “Frantic”; they clearly didn’t think that one out). Many complain that it’s nu metal, but neither rapping nor turntables or anthemic melodies are to be found anywhere. In contrast to their output of the previous 7 years, the sound couldn’t be less commercial if you tried. And like it or not, but I believe that Metallica returned to their thrash side here and not Death Magnetic 5 years later. The lyrical content is fantastic, and sadly overlooked due to the controversial production quality. I find much of it disturbingly relatable much in the same vein as Alice In Chains’ Dirt (nowhere near the same album quality; Dirt is the best grunge and one of the best metal albums ever made). But is St Anger essential listening? Definitely not. Actually I’d say that the Load albums are more essential than this, but next to their 80’s work it pales by comparison. St Anger though does have some of that power, just muddled up to oblivion by crappy production. Still, St Anger is over-hated for no reason other than the production, and is nowhere near as bad as Megadeth’s Risk 4 years earlier. That in and of itself is a compliment all its own.